I have a cunning plan! Farmer facing jail after bid to scare off teenagers... by dressing up as 'mad axeman' and smearing fiancee with KETCHUP

Driven to distraction by yobs repeatedly trashing their farm, John Powell and his fiancée decided on a ­radical response.

Planning to give the suspicious-looking youths parked in a moonlit lane a scare, Lucy Walton smeared her top with ketchup, then Mr Powell ­pretended to chase her past the car, wielding a 4ft axe.

She then banged on the youngsters’ car window with a terrified look on her face screaming: ‘Let me in, let me in!’

A step too far: John Powell is facing prison after a prank feigning an axe attack on his fiancée Lucy Walton, pictured, to scare persistent troublemakers close to his home

Taking the law into their own hands: John Powell, with fiancée Lucy Walton, were hauled before the courts for their prank, which was meant to deter teenagers

Unfortunately, although the teenagers took fright at the blood-curdling scene as planned, they then called police – and yesterday Mr Powell, 28, was facing the threat of a prison sentence over the stunt.

But last night the pair hit out at local police, accusing them of ignoring the nuisance campaign against their Lake District property, and branded the decision to prosecute a joke.

‘We were just trying to teach them a lesson – there’s no way they could have been seriously frightened,’ Mr Powell said.

‘They said I tapped on the car window with the axe – well if I had done, it would have been smashed, it’s such a big axe. It was just a practical joke but now it’s ripped our lives apart.’

The couple were at Miss ­Walton’s family farm and bed and breakfast in Crook, near Lake Windermere, when they spotted the teenagers in a nearby lay-by.

The family say they have been plagued by youths for years, driving cars on their fields, flattening crops and spooking Miss Walton’s £15,000 thoroughbred dressage horse Tyson so badly he ran into a fence and hasn’t been the same since.

‘We spend hours every week clearing up litter and there’s been tyre marks all over our fields,’ said brewery worker Mr Powell.

'She was banging on the window in terror. Not long after he came with an axe and was tapping on the window.
Then we were scared because we thought he was going to smash through the
window'

‘We’ve phoned police countless times to get them to help us but we’ve had no support.’

As it was the run-up to Hallowe’en, they came up with the axe-murder plan to give the youths a good scare.

Miss Walton, 27, who gave up a job as a bank cashier to help out on the farm, accepted a police caution over the incident.

But her partner, originally from Llandrindod Wells in Mid Wales, was
hauled to court where he admitted two charges of possessing an axe in a
public place and using behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or
distress.

At a hearing this week, one of the teenagers in the car, Simon
Jackson, 19, told South Lakeland Magistrates’ Court the incident on
October 20 last year had left him and his friends petrified.

The axe man cometh: John Powell with rubbish he says was left behind by nuisance teenagers close to where he and his fiancee staged their fake attack

Powell wielded a 4ft axe during the episode in the Cumbrian country lane. Here, fictional mad axeman Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, smashes through a door in the climactic scene of The Shining horror film

Weeping as she gave evidence, Miss Walton said the spoof attack had been her idea and a split-second decision.

But she insisted: ‘I waved to them and I was laughing, I don’t understand how they didn’t realise it was a joke.’

However magistrates told Mr Powell he could be jailed when he is sentenced next week.

The couple had wanted to get married in Jamaica this summer before taking a two-year working holiday in Australia, but both plans have had to be abandoned.Miss Walton has also been told her caution means she won’t be able to resume her old job at Barclays.

‘This whole incident has ruined my life and I could be facing prison,’ her partner said yesterday.

‘I deeply regret everything but our family are the real victims in all of this and I can’t believe something this stupid has come to court.’

Miss Walton’s mother Margaret, 71, said: ‘It was only a prank. The police took it far too seriously – they came in here, tramping around the carpet in their dirty boots. I suppose they were looking for the body.’

There is no evidence that the youths in the car were involved in disruption at the farm.